Chapter 4226: Mobius Strip II

Noah listened to Elysia Firmhand, his mind a quiet, whirring engine of analysis.

He turned to the other body of Khor, who had chosen to accompany him on this journey, and sent his voice only for her to hear.

’How much truth is there in her words?’

Khor smiled, a mysterious, knowing expression.

’As far as I can tell, all of it seems to be true. The Wandering Territories used to be where the undesirables of existence were sent. Who knows how much they have changed since the Earliest Folds...’

...!

At this time, the voice of Elysia Firmhand echoed out again, her tone now hushed, cautious.

"Be ready. We have begun crossing."

The brilliant, multicolored lights that had been surging all around the vessel slowly died down, and their surroundings became clear.

The tens of thousands of different Living Existences on the Barge gazed out, and what they saw was enough to cause a collective, silent gasp of marvel and wonder.

They were in a realm that defied all known laws of existence and aesthetics.

The sky was not a sky, but a swirling, living canvas of impossible nebulae, their colors shifting from a deep, velvety purple to a vibrant, electric blue.

Floating continents of what looked like crystalline coral, some the size of moons, others as vast as galaxies, drifted through the void, their surfaces covered in a strange, pulsating flora that sang with a silent, psionic energy.

Rivers of what looked like liquid time, shimmering with the light of a billion captured collapsed moments, flowed between these landmasses, sometimes defying gravity to flow upwards or sideways.

Strange, bioluminescent creatures, part fish, part bird, part pure concept, swam through the very air, leaving trails of sparkling, ephemeral dust in their wake.

It was a place of breathtaking, terrifying beauty.

The Obsidian Ox pulled the Barge slowly, carefully, through this impossible landscape.

Elysia Firmhand’s voice, when she spoke again, was a low, hushed whisper, as if she did not want to be heard by the many terrifying things that could be lurking in the beautiful, chaotic shadows.

"You all perceive existence as a collection of containers," she began, her voice cutting through the hushed awe of the tens of thousands of Living Existences aboard the Barge.

"Folds, Wheels, Omniverses. Each has an inside and an outside, a boundary between what is and what is not. The Elder Farmers of the Sanctuary taught us differently. The Wandering Territories... they are not a container. They are a surface."

She raised a hand, tracing a line in the shimmering air.

"Imagine a strip of reality, impossibly long, containing all the echoes of collapsed existence. Now, give that strip a single half-twist and connect the ends. You’ve created... a Mobius Strip. It has no inside or outside. It has only one side, one continuous, paradoxical surface."

Her gaze swept over the assembled Dukes and Royal Living Existences, her white-blue eyes holding the cold light of a truth that offered no comfort.

"That is this place. A single vast endless weaving of existence, endlessly folding back on itself. There is no ’other side’ to cross to. Every path you take, no matter how straight, will eventually lead you back to your own beginning. Fleeing from a predator in a straight line might mean you are simply running into its jaws from the other direction, an eon later. The ’spaces between spaces’ we are traversing are not a void, but the very same surface, just a different point on the loop."

She let the terrible implications settle, the silence on the deck now thick with a new, more profound dread.

"We are not sailing across an ocean," she concluded, her voice a low, chilling whisper.

"We are ants crawling on an existential ribbon with no end. Our only hope is that the other things crawling on it with us are moving in the same direction. For now."

BOOM!

"From this point onwards, avoidance is more ideal than fighting. Moving alone is much safer. When traversing with large numbers of existences, the risk is much higher. Stay alert."

Just like that, the forces of the Living Existences, Noah, and a few of his people, began their perilous journey into the heart of the Wandering Territories!

—

Across the Transcendent Origin Folds, the raw, bleeding wounds in reality were being tended and closed!

The nine-headed Ancestral Turtle moved with a slow, ponderous grace, its colossal form a mobile bastion of stability as it contributed the most to closing the Tears.

It was a slow, arduous process, a painstaking act of cauterization, but it was working. The endless tide of The Dead was being stemmed at its source.

As the last of the tears were being sealed, a tense, bitter silence settled over the surviving forces.

The Living Paradoxes, their forms shimmering with a contained, restless energy, began to gather. They had fought, they had bled their authority, and now, as the immediate threat subsided, the old animosities were resurfacing like sharks in calming waters.

The other Living Existences watched them, their gazes a mixture of cold gratitude and deep, abiding mistrust!

The verdant Marks of Unity still glowed above their heads, a fragile, enforced promise of peace, but the feeling of unity had already evaporated.

Duke Diviticus, her face a mask of cold fury, looked out at the legions of Origins and Laws and others who were already turning their backs on them.

"Ungrateful bunch," she spat, her voice a low, venomous hiss that was swallowed by the vastness of the Fold.

With a final, collective glare of disdain, the Living Paradoxes began to depart.

They did not fly or teleport; they simply... ceased to be there, flickering out of existence like faulty concepts, leaving reality to wonder if they had ever truly been allies at all.

As the last of them vanished, prompts, grand and final, bloomed in Noah’s vision.

|The Battle for the Transcendent Origin Folds has concluded.|

|The Harvest Festival of Death has reached its end.|

A new, profound silence fell, but this one was for him alone.

High above the scarred Folds, in a dimension only he could perceive, a tear opened.

It was not a wound, but a doorway. From it, the Deathly Cache of Perpetual Harvest descended!

It was a treasure chest of impossible, terrible beauty, its form carved from obsidian that seemed to drink the very light of existence, its edges traced with veins of incandescent gold that pulsed with a slow, hungry rhythm.

It was a promise of reward, a treasure born from the ashes of a thousand endings!

|With the Festival of Death coming to an end, the siphoned portions of defeated existences accumulated in the Deathly Cache of Perpetual Harvest will now be amplified and distributed.|

HUUM!

Noah watched as the cache floated down before him, its presence a weight that made his own vast power feel... expectant.

The lid, etched with a spiraling motif of skulls and blooming lotuses, slowly began to open!

A glorious, blinding light erupted from within. It was not the pure white of Origin or the chaotic rainbow of Paradox.

It was a river of incandescent, obsidian-gold light, the color of a dying wheel’s last, most beautiful breath. It was the color of a harvest reaped from a field of death!

|The final harvest is being distributed.|

|For your leadership, your desperation, and your tyrannical will to overcome, The Early Creature, Osmont, has gained:|

|+1 Quadrillion Complexity|

|+1 Quadrillion Purity|

|All other participants under your guidance have gained:|

|+150 Trillion Complexity and Purity each.|

|Special Acknowledgment: The participants Khor and Arch Lich Ra’Zan played significant roles as catalysts and primary actors. Their boons are tripled.|

|Khor has gained: +450 Trillion Complexity and Purity.|

|Arch Lich Ra’Zan has gained: +450 Trillion Complexity.|

WAA!

The loot light surged from the open cache, not as a gentle wave, but as a torrential, roaring river! It wrapped around Noah and his Legion...Ozymandias, Ra’Zan, the Ape, the newly born Dullahan, and the dozens of The Dead in the rising Legion...a glorious, all-consuming embrace.

Noah felt it pour into his existence, a flood of pure, unadulterated power that would have drowned a lesser being!

His every cell, every atom, every thread of his being sang with the ecstasy of this impossible growth.

As the light subsided, a new, heavy silence fell upon the battlefield. The remaining Living Existences, those who had survived the initial onslaught, were now staring at him.

Their expressions were wry, their gazes filled with a new, profound unease. He had commanded The Dead. He had raised a Legion of them.

He was an anomaly, a power that did not fit into their ordered, predictable world. Until now, his forces had not been ascertained on exactly where they belonged!

But they said nothing. After the display of power they had just witnessed, what could they say?

Noah ignored their stares. He had his power, he had his people, and their opinions were less than dust in the wind.

With a final, sweeping gaze across the healing Fold, he waved his hand.

A brilliant light wrapped around him and his forces, and in the next instant, they were gone!

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